In the first three days of Labour Party conference (30 Sep - 4 Oct, in Manchester), delegates have three times voted down the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) report.
Each time the chair, Michael Cashman, has bulldozed on, declaring the report accepted and ignoring calls for a card vote.
Delegates had a struggle to get the composite on the NHS onto conference floor, and avoid it being gutted. Many other proposals were manipulated off the agenda.
Two rank-and-file rule-change proposals were rejected for debate after being held up for a year on the grounds that the National Executive had put its own rule-change to conference — with no notice — which was to do with roughly the same area of the rulebook, even though the Executive proposal did not contradict them.
At a “High Pay” fringe meeting TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said that the brief she’d be given was to talk about how to inject morality into capitalism, and commented that was like putting compassion into conservatism.
From the conference platform, though, caring capitalism and empathetic exploitation were the line. And Ed Balls declared he would maintain Tory pay curbs and not reverse Tory cuts.
Five Labour activists in Manchester spoke to Solidarity.
Christine Shawcroft is a long-standing member of Labour’s National Executive
I would hope that the leadership would adhere to conference policy on things like supporting council housing, and taking the railways back into public ownership. They need to stop accepting the premise of the Tories’ arguments that there has to be austerity and cuts.
I fear that the leadership will carry on talking about “difficult decisions”, and saying they’ll make cuts too, just not as far and as fast as the Tories.
If we want to shift things before the 2015 election, selections and the composition of the Parliamentary Labour Party are vital. Miliband is surrounded by Blairites. If he does want to fulfil the things he said during the leadership election, he’s surrounded by people who are undermining him.
We have got to try and stop Blairites from being selected as candidates. We’ve got to have people who are committed to a democratic, open party which carries out party policy, and makes the policy-making process more open and transparent.
Dominic Curran is an activist in Young Labour
Passing the Bridgend CLP proposal to allow conference to amend National Policy Forum documents passed is important.
We don’t want a return to the politics of the Blair years. We need the unions to put sufficient pressure on the leadership to make a break with that.
Getting the unions behind party reform has always been difficult, even with left union leaders. The issue should be raised at union conferences, to get unions to support rule changes within the party.
Maria Exall is an activist in the Communication Workers’ Union and LGBT rep on the TUC General Council
Shifting the party in time for 2015 is both a question of structure and one of political will. We need to open things up to real discussions of big ideas.
There’s been a long-term trend of de-politicisation within the party and retreating from those big debates. Even after the surge in new members in 2010, you can see that trend reflected at this conference.
The Blairites did a good job of hollowing out the party and its structures. There’s a lot of cynicism, and it’ll take time for things to revive.
Pete Firmin is joint secretary of the Labour Representation Committee
There are struggles both inside and outside the party. Inside, the left and the unions need to go on the offensive to change the policies and the process by which the policies are made. Hopefully some of the things Len McCluskey has been saying will get carried through.
That has to be combined with involvement in local anti-cuts campaigns, industrial disputes, campaigns around the NHS. We have to get the party involved in that to show that there is an alternative to rolling over and accepting those things.
There have been some successes already. Ealing had a demonstration of nearly 5,000 against hospital closures. Labour councillors and local Labour MPs were out on that demonstration, as well as local party members.
In Hammersmith, the Labour MP Andy Slaughter has been leading the NHS campaign. That clearly has an effect.
Russell Cartwright is treasurer of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and a member of the Unite delegation
I hope there’ll be moves towards greater democracy in the party, with conference winning the right to amend National Policy Forum documents.
I fear that we’ll end up saying too little. At this stage through the Coalition’s government, we need to set out our stall more clearly.
We need to work with the unions and supportive CLPs to change the policies before the 2015 election. Unite’s new strategy is still in its early stages and will need sustained effort, not only up to the next election but under the next Labour government too.
